IMW 2019

Nunsfield House ARG activated Moira Furnace Museum on Saturday 16th & Sunday 17th June for part of International Museums Weekends.

Moira Furnace is located near to Swadlincote and is in the county of North West Leicestershire, although is covered under a Derbyshire postal code and is surrounded by a Country park.

A couple of the group managed to set up the mast for the Tri Band collinear at the top of the furnace chimney on the Friday afternoon prior to the event, which allowed us a little more time on the Saturday working out the rest of the operation.

Saturday morning we all arrived around 9am and had two guests on hand to help with the setup and operation, Rob G7LAS & his son Ben M6XOO.

Saturday the WX was a little overcast at times a spot of drizzle in the morning but that didn’t dampen our spirts. With the marquee erected and equipment set out the only thing left to do was to drop down the feeders and the legs of the 80/40/20 trapped dipole from the top of the chimney. After a few attempts the feeders reached the bottom without getting lodged on the way down and the legs stretched out and anchored one to a tree branch and the other to a pend off area.

We had a little hiccup that the power lead for the TS 480 SAT was not packed so we dropped the HF operation on to the FT991 which had been earmarked for FT8 use.

On the other side of the marquee we had the FT 736r for the 2m setup.

It wasn’t long before our two guests Rob & Ben had soon worked many stations and populating the log sheets.

Before long we had run out of time for Saturday’s operation and had to pack down. We had just managed this before the down pour began.

Following Morning setup began swiftly and a little delay before gaining power and we were ready to go. Steve and his good lady Elizabeth came along in the morning to have a natter before going off for a spot of food at the local café.

WX was a much finer day and many more stations in the log especially on HF.

So we had a good turn out from the club which included: -

Ken Frankcom – G3OCA

Peter Walker – G6KUI

Paul Gamble – G1SGZ

Stefan Latimer – 2E0VKM

Connor Reeve – 2E0EIY

Richard Janezko – 2E0ZDY

Ron Jones – 2E0FBT

Steve Haigh – M0OSI

And of course thanks for the great help and support from Rob Cridland - G7LAS & Ben Cridland – M6XOO

Special thanks to the staff at Moira Furnace Museum www.moirafurnace.org for allowing us to operate from their stunning location.